Listed company Marathon purchases another 10,000 Ant S19 pro top-level Bitcoin mining machines

Marathon Patent Group Inc., a leading public company in the Bitcoin mining space, has signed a new contract with Bitmain to purchase an additional 10,000 next-generation Antminer S19 Pro ASIC miners.

Marathon said the contract will provide the company with 23,560 mining machines, “making it the largest local miner with a total hash rate of 2.56 EH/s.” That would rank it among the top 15 mining groups in the world.

The mining equipment purchase agreement is the latest in a series of recent moves by Marathon to increase its bitcoin mining computing power at a time when the price of bitcoin has recovered.

“We are a continuation of our recently publicly announced moves and we believe this transaction has the potential to create value for shareholders,” the company told Decrypt via email. “The rise in Bitcoin has certainly increased our confidence in our existing growth plans.”

In August, the company announced a $23 million deal with Bitmain to purchase 10,500 S19 Pro Miners, which was described as a milestone. The company said that once the August agreement is completed, it will bring the company's business to 13,520 next-generation miners, generating 1.55 Exahash of computing power.

In late August, Marathon announced an all-stock acquisition of Fastblock Mining, saying it would reduce the cost of mining Bitcoin by more than half. However, the agreement fell apart in September when the two parties were unable to reach a long-term equity agreement at an acceptable price.

Earlier this month, Marathon announced a joint venture with Beowulf Energy to form a 105 MW Bitcoin mining data center. The data center is expected to generate 1.265 EH/s of computing power by the second quarter of 2021 and can be expanded to 3.320 EH/s of computing power. A spokesperson said the deal will reduce the company's total mining costs for electricity and data center management by 38%, and will make the company more resilient if the price of Bitcoin falls in the future.

That said, the company said current Bitcoin prices are very favorable for its operations, especially after the installation of recently purchased mining machines.

“The underlying price of Bitcoin will always play a significant role in our ultimate revenue and profitability, but we believe our position as the largest self-service miner currently operating in North America gives us confidence for the future,” it said.

The company believes that the process of operating successfully comes down to two things: increasing power output and reducing the cost of producing Bitcoin, and it plans to continue pursuing this strategy.

When asked about the impact of the Bitcoin halving earlier this year, the spokesperson said that since Bitcoin’s mining rewards were reduced by 50%, it made the mining industry more challenging.

“It is much more difficult for smaller businesses to stay solvent,” the spokesperson said. “Scale is critical to remain competitive and successful. Our unique relationship with Bitmain and the 23,560 mining machines purchased to date demonstrate that we can clearly grow despite the halving.”